Obama vs. Jones

Obama and the right to burn the Koran

Charles Lane 9/10/10 WaPo

President Obama was certainly right to be disgusted by "Reverend" Terry Jones's threat to stage a public burning of the Koran, a plan that was mean, stupid, intolerant, and spookily evocative of Hitlerian book bonfires. But I am also troubled by Obama's efforts to hector Jones into changing his mind. Everyone should worry when presidents invoke wartime security, or similar arguments, against constitutionally protected free speech, even -- or especially -- when the speech is offensive, outrageous and unpopular.

Strictly speaking, there was nothing unconstitutional about Obama's campaign, abetted by an all-star cast of national security officials, to get Jones to back off. Presidents have free speech, too. But when was the last time an American citizen got a phone call from the Secretary of Defense urging him to call off a political demonstration? Invoking his status as commander-in-chief, Obama accused Jones of, in effect, abetting America's enemies: "This kind of behavior or threats of action put our young men and women in harm's way. And it's also the best imaginable recruiting tool for al-Qaeda."

This was pretty heavy-handed use of the bully pulpit. The president seemed oblivious to the contradiction between his pressure on Jones and his view, repeated at Friday's press conference, that the U.S. must strictly follow the Constitution when prosecuting terrorism suspects -- lest the terrorists win by getting us to curtail liberty. "We can't be frightened by a handful of people who are trying to do us harm," he said. Yet to the extent Obama opposed Jones's exercise of free speech -- including mere "threats of action" -- because it might trigger a violent reaction, he was expressing, and yielding to, fear of those very "people."

Obama should have condemned what Jones wanted to do, but defended unequivocally his right to do it.

In response to calls for censorship from around the world, he should have explained clearly that the U.S. president doesn't have that power -- and that he's glad he doesn't. He should have declared that America is great in part because its people are free to study the Bible or the Torah or the Koran or the Constitution -- and, yes, within very wide limits, to burn them in protest. He might have added that many Muslim-majority countries could themselves benefit from more such freedom of thought, speech and expression.

Instead, he offered the tepid affirmation, in an interview with ABC News, that "part of this country's history is people doing destructive or offensive or harmful things. And yet, we still have to make sure that we're following the laws. And that's part of what I love about this country."

Instead, the president of the United States broadcast his fear that a U.S. citizen's exercise of his liberty will provoke Muslim violence -- without even calling upon Muslims to refrain from such attacks, much less declaring that they would be completely unjustified, and correspondingly resisted.

Worst of all, Obama set a precedent for presidentially-encouraged self-censorship based on the anticipated mood swings of mobs and fanatics.

Terry Jones created a bad situation; the president's reaction may make it worse.

Me:

I'm less worried about the free speech chill than the misguidedness of elevating this nut Jones rather than marginalzing him. Someone somewhere in America is going to burn a Koran, no little because of the attention Obama's gaze on Jones generated. Plus, when Americans need to cease and desist in their consituitonal actions because of concern for how Muslims pervasively will respond, then that, to my mind, really does signal the conditions etxant for concluding there is a clash of civilizations.